Sales have never been better for crypto hardware wallet company Ledger – and all it took was the collapse of one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
TechCrunch reporter Jacquelyn Melinek tweeted on Monday that sales of Ledger’s crypto hardware wallet rose sharply last week, with Sunday marking the company’s highest ever single day of sales. Melinek relayed the information from Ledger’s chief experience officer, Ian Rogers.
Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier confirmed the high figures, telling Decrypt on Tuesday that the hardware wallet company beat its Sunday sales figure the very next day.
“People are realizing that we must return to decentralization and to self-custody. ‘Not your keys, not your coins.’ A saying as old as crypto itself, but it has never been more relevant,” Gauthier told Decrypt.
Trezor, another hardware wallet manufacturer, recorded a 300% uptick in sales revenue over the week, Cointelegraph reported on Monday.
After FTX’s collapse, panicked users moved funds off exchanges and other centralized platforms. These fears are hardly unwarranted; several entities who custody users’ crypto assets, including major crypto lender BlockFi, have halted withdrawals in the last week.
In the aftermath of the FTX catastrophe, industry proponents called for users to self-custody their crypto assets. These included Changpeng Zhao, CEO of centralized crypto exchange Binance, who called self-custody a “fundamental human right,” in a tweet last week.
Glassnode data shared by Dennis Parker on Twitter showed that users withdrew a staggering amount of Bitcoin from exchanges over the last week. As of Nov. 15, there was around 2.25 million Bitcoin left on exchanges.
